Planning Commission Regular Meeting   11/25/2025

November 25, 2025 Albemarle County Planning Commission to order.

Madam Clerk, do we get the roll?

Firehock?

Here.

Here.

Mr. Moore?

We will open it up for public comments on matters pending before the commission, but not listed on the agenda.

Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak?

No.

The consent agenda.

Is there anyone in the commission that would like to withdraw any items from the consent agenda?

I move approval of the consent agenda.

Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

We have a little bit of housekeeping.

The work session that was scheduled for later this evening has been rescheduled for November 9th.

December 9th.

Sorry.

For December 9th at 4 p.m.

And so we would need a motion and.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

OK.

We will move on then to the public hearing for SP2024-17, Funk Brothers Furniture.

Good evening.

My name is Jared Tate.

I'm a senior planner with the planning division of Albemarle County Community Development, and I'm here to give staff's presentation for SP 2024-17 for Funk Brothers Furniture.

The existing parcel is just over three acres in size and is located at the northeast corner of Richmond Road and Moose Lane, approximately four and a half miles east of Pantops and across Route 250 from the Rivanna Village development.

In its current state, both the building and the parcel are vacant and underutilized.

The building was formerly a moose lodge and is presently non-conforming structure in regards to rural area setbacks.

The zoning for the parcel is rural areas and the same zoning applies to the majority of the surrounding parcels.

There's a small area of C1 commercial zoning to the west along Route 250, represented by the pink shading.

And there's also the neighborhood model district zoning for Rivanna Village across Route 250, represented by the green shading.

Punk Brothers Furniture has operated in Charlottesville for over 15 years and has requested this special use permit to move their operations to a larger space within the county.

They have requested the SP for a gift craft and antique shop with a particular focus on the craft shop use.

Section 3.1 of the zoning ordinance defines a craft shop as an establishment wherein handmade goods are offered for sale.

Under their proposal, the existing structures on the parcel will remain and be reused.

The applicant proposes to remediate existing infrastructure as needed for safe use of the site, as well as to add landscape screening adjacent to Route 250 and Moose Lane.

Additionally, they propose to use the portion of the existing building that is farthest from the neighboring properties for their active operations in order to further limit potential impacts to adjacent properties.

As noted earlier, the existing building is a nonconforming structure in relation to rural area zoning setbacks and at its nearest point is approximately 17 feet from the adjacent residential property to the east.

The applicant does propose to repair and maintain a screening fence that exists along that property line.

And new plantings are also proposed to provide additional screening between the two parcels.

Special use permits are evaluated against the factors for consideration as outlined in section 33.40 of the zoning ordinance.

Staff believe the proposed SP will not be detrimental to adjacent parcels, will not change the character of the nearby area, will be in harmony with the rural area zoning district, and is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

Staff has identified two positive aspects of the proposal, those being that the proposal is consistent with the review criteria for special use permits contained in the zoning ordinance and that no detrimental impacts to adjoining properties are anticipated.

We have also identified one concern, that being that the existing structure is nonconforming to setbacks.

However, a use buffer and screening will be provided to mitigate this concern.

In summary, staff recommend approval of SP 2024-17 with the following five conditions.

Just a couple questions.

OK.

And then the second question, it was the prior owners, I guess the fraternal order, that constructed the building too close to the property line.

I am not certain that building was constructed in 1965 by county records.

And the house certainly was not there.

And the house was not there.

Good evening.

My name is Mike Funk.

I'm one of the brothers.

To answer, I'm Dan's brother, your neighbor.

Nice to meet you.

To answer your question, we are, so owning, we're acquiring a property in partnership with another buyer.

That half of the building that is close to the adjacent property, that's his half.

So our operation is really not anywhere near that.

But we have proposed that 50-foot setback voluntarily.

And then I think we're also doing a firewall in there in the building to just to separate more from the other half of the building.

That 17-foot setback, I think that was established.

That building was built before the next door neighbor's house was built.

I think it was just woods or maybe part of the moose lodge.

I don't know for sure.

I guess there wasn't a concern in 65.

Okay, sure.

We had a guy, Connor O'Donnell, he's been kind of our advocate during the process.

He's in planning.

He's coming from Richmond, and I think he ran into some traffic, so I'm a little bit

I wasn't planning to come up here, but my name is Mike.

That's my brother, Dan.

We're craftsmen.

We fix things.

We restore antique furniture from time to time.

We build furniture by order for customers, local customers, and we love to do it.

We think that what we do would work in harmony with a rural setting.

We work mostly by hand.

We use local materials.

Our customers are local, so it's a very locally home-based organization.

Do you have any other questions for me?

I have a few, and this is just sort of clarity on your, on the piece.

I'm glad you said what you said about the putting, that you're going to have two sort of primary functions in that building, sort of under two different ownerships.

Because when I drove up there, I noticed that you had sort of a lot of English.

Well, there you had one English car and the rest of them were German vehicles.

And so I wondered if it was going to be like where you are now.

And I'll say this because when I first, I went, I first found you in the city off of Cherry Avenue or something like that, somewhere down there off, we were off of a,

Avon in that little narrow way.

And I'm looking over there because I was looking for a particular person who worked on Porsches at the time.

Okay, that explains my question.

Those cars are his, the ones that are in front out there.

He's getting rid of those, but he's still going to have, he had some of his racing team there.

That's why I was looking for him at one point.

his racing team.

He had at one point when he was racing, this is a shaggy dog entrance so we don't need to go there but I was just wondering who your partner was and I'm glad to know it was it's him.

The other thing I noticed on your on page four and you can just say that page four you on your report on your comments you say that you're going to

Page four, the first bullet, it says that an unofficial bilateral crossroad community where customers can move between each businesses.

I'm assuming we're talking about the antique businesses.

So that must be something to countervote.

We're next to A&W Collectibles.

And I think that the idea there is that if people are

That's what I thought.

Thank you very much.

So this is not, I'm just trying to understand a little bit more of the use of the property.

It is huge.

That is a Saturday night Moose Lodge parking lot.

It's a lot.

Not currently, no.

I mean, I think it would be fun to see maybe weekend farm markets out there occasionally.

I noticed that they do that kind of thing next door to A&W.

With the co-owner, I was just curious if there's going to be any sort of special use permits.

Do you know if we'll need to consider additional special use permits for that other half?

No, that's just going to be his personal use.

Okay, cool.

As far as I know, he doesn't have any.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I was curious, there's a little bit in here about, you know, sort of the jobs of employing people in the economic development of this, you know, sort of fine woodworking industry.

I think we could probably... Ken, I'm sorry, can you speak into the mic?

Can you speak into the mic?

It's kind of hard to... You can just lift it up.

Yeah, you can just lift it up.

When we left our spot in the city we had between four and six employees at any given time and we were always busy and I feel like we can add more employees ultimately.

We're also going to be opening a retail space within our building that would add more employees.

So I feel like we're, in a small way, good for our local economy.

That's what I like to say.

And there seems to be plenty of that kind of work for us.

We have often gotten calls from people that just no one else will fix what they have.

No one else can do what we're doing.

And I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but it feels good to be able to save stuff.

Especially today when people, we have a culture where people buy things and throw them away and we like to kind of buck that trend, so.

Thanks.

Really, just a quick question.

Why are you moving?

Well, that's part of the answer, yes.

We will be able to double our floor space.

We, in a sense, it's an investment for us.

We are partners in the ownership of the building.

We were renting before.

It's getting harder to find space in the city and more expensive.

And just one other quick question.

It's hard to imagine it's getting worse looking.

Yeah, so are you going, like I noticed there's, you know, cracked pavement and weeds growing up.

It was vacant for 10 years, I believe.

There were people living in it from time to time, and we're slowly helping it heal, I guess is a way to put it, yes.

Exactly.

So yeah, I've continued to hear that because, you know, obviously, we're not, this is the first time we've been through this kind of thing.

And

We've been very focused on what we're doing, but we're also cognizant of the fact that there's a lot of land out there and it could be useful for things.

My son was in Boy Scouts.

Their troop actually used to meet in that building.

That's right.

So I think about things like that.

How can we bring the community in and be welcoming?

Great.

We will open it up for public comment.

It's okay.

You can.

Okay.

Open it up to public comments if there's anyone from the public that would like to speak to this matter.

Please state your name and general location and where you live.

You have three minutes.

Great.

So my name is Connor O'Donnell.

I was supposed to present for them, but traffic was a little more Thanksgiving, right?

So one thing I wanted to come up, Mike did a good job of just giving the background on the business.

But this, I wanted to get a little bit more background on kind of how we got here and

This goes forward to you all looking at the zoning code rewrite.

So as we were moving to the county, we thought, you know, an artisan craft shop would probably be able to go find somewhere to operate no problem with a special use permit.

We found that there's a pretty huge gap in being able to do that you can operate a home occupation in the rural areas.

But

The next step of that is being a manufacturing facility in a commercial district or commercially zoned area.

So, you know, we looked around different localities, Nelson County, Goochland, they allow for different types of makers, craft artisans in the rural area.

But that's missing here.

And we latched on to this word definition called artisan manufacturing, because that is a

definition that's in the Rio 29 overlay district.

And it's perfect for, you know, expanding to the rural areas.

So when we started all of this, we started actually trying to move forward with the zoning text amendment first, to try to establish artisan manufacturing in the rural areas.

But with the zoning code rewrite, this was almost a year, year and a half ago now.

and so you know just looking very far ahead staff and we had a few board of supervisor members come out and they were they agreed that there's this hole here but they wanted to fold it into the zoning code rewrite so I wanted to bring that up and say that that's something that's definitely missing here.

Supervisor Malek was very supportive.

She remembered the Monticello Artisan Trail from you know early 2010s and how the county helped businesses kind of the more home

Occupation businesses learn how to go through the zoning, the tax parts of this business.

But definitely a huge gap here.

We're kind of wedging into this craft shop with the help of staff, but it has not been easy.

And so as the zoning rewrite comes in front of you, I ask that you look at artisan manufacturing.

Again, the definition we already have in the zoning ordinance.

Thank you.

Anyone else like to speak to this matter?

Okay, bring it back.

I don't have much to discuss.

I think it's an appropriate use for that location.

And there, they did mention in their application also, they were trying to use local materials such as locally sourced wood.

So that's something we're all about.

It makes sense for rural area.

And it's it's very accessible in its current location for customers to come by.

So I don't really have any, any concerns with this.

So I'd be willing to make a motion.

I was just going to actually make a comment as well.

I also supported this was an easy one.

But just to actually echo our last speaker there, I think actually I have some similar comments about this one and the next one about things we might consider changing in our zoning modernization process coming down the pike.

And this artisan manufacturing, I think is very consistent with the ideas we've had about the rural area for a long time.

Yeah, absolutely.

We have talked about this in the past about someone who just wanted to paint paintings, which has got to be the quietest thing to do.

And people were really concerned about the fact that once a month, one person might come and visit them.

It was just, it just seemed ridiculous.

And at the time, I said we really needed to update our code.

Thank you.

I was looking for the road as you were saying that because I was remembering sort of the neighbors who I was remembering the neighbors who were put out because this woman was a painter and she might have one open house have an open house once or twice a year and like six people came but this was sort of a you know and anyhow I agree I think if there's a way for us

I'm going to pivot to something.

So I think there's a way to pivot to a different way of doing commerce.

I'm probably one of the few people in the room who's ever been to the Moose Hall when it was a Moose Hall.

And so I can speak to the fact that I went there for a ceremony.

for a neighbor who received his green coat.

That's a story we can talk about another time.

But it's emblematic that the reason that this building is open for these individuals is because the population of individuals in our community who that was a natural place for them to fellowship.

that population of workers, that population of individuals has diminished to a point that there's only a Moose Lodge in Waynesboro and Louisa.

and so that's talking about the shift in population in our community.

And as we do that shift, and I think we need to be thinking about what are the other opportunities that we can bring?

And I think artists and working artists at home is a different kind of community, is a different kind of economic set of values.

And so I absolutely support this and I find it interesting that for the applicant,

When you talk to your partner, Mr. Kootenai knows how to do

Farm Markets because a portion of his property in town is used for a farm market on weekends.

So he knows how to get that done and he's someone who understands how to navigate sort of the rules and the things that sort of set us apart.

So I would say I think this is a good use of this property.

No, I like moose.

It could be funky moose.

It could be the funky moose, and then you could create some music for that.

I have a question for Seth.

I thought we had some conditions.

Yes, we do have some conditions.

So we just need to, we just need to accept the... You could say with the condition that's recommended by staff.

Okay.

Yeah.

Second.

Discussion.

Okay.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana.

Aye.

Mr. Moore.

Aye.

Mr. Bivins.

Aye.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And now we are moving on to CMA 2025-11-5546, Three Notched Road.

Good evening, everyone.

Give me one moment.

All right.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Cameron Langell.

I'm a principal planner with the Planning Division of Community Development, and I'm going to be giving you the staff report and recommendation on ZMA 2025-11, which is 5546 Three Notch Road.

So to begin, we're out in Crozet.

This property is on the north side of Route 240 or Three Notch Road and it's about 1,000 feet west of where the Star Hill Brewery is located.

Surrounding properties have a slight mix of uses.

Most of them are single-family detached.

There's some form of agricultural use to the north and then south there's the railroad and further south of that is some higher medium density neighborhoods like Glenbrook.

This property measures 0.603 acres, and it's currently zoned R2 residential.

The ZMA before you tonight is asking to rezone it to the R4 residential district with proffers.

The Crozet master plan recommends neighborhood density residential future land uses, which that would allow for residential uses between three and six units an acre.

And it also calls for green systems in the center of the property.

What this map shows in purple is where there is a water protection ordinance stream buffer.

And so the master plan basically recommends neighborhood density everywhere that you don't see that, and then green systems where you do.

So this is a conceptual sort of development plan that the applicant has prepared for this property.

And what it's meant to demonstrate is that they would be able to build a duplex on the property and then subdivide it into two individual parcels.

There's sort of two reasons why they're requesting R4.

One of them is that the R2 district just does not allow duplexes.

The other part is that based on the parcel acreage, they need to have a higher density zoning district.

So what this shows is two future lots.

One of them is about 15,000 square feet.

The other is 10,900 square feet.

And both of those are larger than what the minimum lot size requirement is in the R4 district.

So this is just meant to show it's feasible to build these dwelling units, have them located outside of the stream buffer, and then also subdivide them and comply with zoning ordinance regulations.

So the positive aspects of this request, it's consistent with the land use and density recommendations from the Crozet Master Plan.

The applicant has put forth a proffer statement that commits to providing both of these new units as affordable units that would be consistent with the housing Albemarle housing policy, at least for rates and prices.

The one concern we have is that Housing Albemarle recommends that for sale affordable dwelling units remain affordable for a period of 40 years.

And the way these proffers are written is that they would remain affordable for 30 years.

That said, staff recommends approval for the reasons stated in the staff report.

I do have a question, but I don't believe you're going to be able to give me the answer that I'm hoping for.

There.

No, no.

Sometimes my questions are just to get them in the record.

That's what this is about.

So if this should go forward, this will significantly change the value of the land that is adjacent to it.

and my hope is that there's a way that this doesn't begin a movement to make those the taxes for those individuals move at a dramatic rate because the houses that are there

are very modest houses.

And I'm sure, given the applicant's track record, these will not be modest houses to that extent.

And so that's my concern.

Well, I'm not the county assessor, so it's hard for me to speak with great authority on this, but I'll make a stab at it.

One differential will be different zoning districts between the adjacent ones and this.

Obviously, those parcels that are either side of it won't have the right to have extra dwelling units there, so while the renovation of the building may

raise the value of the structure that's on the property we're talking about tonight.

The zoning for the adjacent ones will remain the same.

So I would assume that that would keep them in line with what they have the capacity to do on that land, which will be lower than this parcel.

So I would think that it will not affect the assessment values of those adjacent properties significantly.

I had a quick question too with the affordable housing policy that we passed a year and a half ago.

Is that about right?

Does this proposal then qualify for the property tax discount or no?

The housing office just evaluated the proffer statement and what commitments were being put forth by the applicant.

They said, yes, in terms of the affordable price rate that we have in Housing Albemarle, this would give 100% of the new units, which is just two, but both of them would be affordable.

So then most mortgages are for 30 years, not 40.

And the way that Habitat for Humanity is structured is they have right of first refusal for these properties.

It says that in the application.

So if someone owned it, and after 30 years, when their mortgage ends, that would be the time they may want to sell, then Habitat would

either acquire that or they would be able to get a similar property somewhere else.

So even though it is the 30-year period and not the 40, the way that Habitat has structured their sales, there will still be somewhere in the county if not those two affordable units as a result of creating this.

Right.

I have a question that I'm going to ask staff, but I'm also going to ask the applicant.

I'm just wondering in the conversations, one of the things I noticed is the range of 25 to 80 percent of EMI is pretty big range.

I don't think anyone from community development had spoken with the applicant about that range.

It's possible there were some conversations between the housing office and the applicant before the application came in, but we're starting to see more rezonings.

Not many of them have made their way up to a public hearing yet, but we're seeing rezonings that are proposing affordable units at much wider ranges than what we have in the past.

Well, we'll ask the applicant because it's interesting.

I mean, that's a pretty, pretty wide range of 2020.

Maybe gives them more flexibility because it depends on what clients they have available, who's available to move there, et cetera.

Sure.

They'll tell us.

Right.

Any other question for staff?

All right.

Hello, my name is Amy George.

I'm with Radha Bush and Gail.

I'm here representing our client, Habitat for Humanity.

I'm with the President and CEO, Dan Rosenwig, David Schmidt, who's the Chief Construction Officer, and Amanda Harlow, who's the Residential Planning and Design Manager.

As a

Cameron stated, this is a 0.6 acre site.

It's a small site.

Habitat was approached to buy the site from the owner with the, I guess, with the dream of having this as two units on the site.

Currently the house that was there is no longer there.

It was falling in, so it has been removed.

So we want to rezone the property from R2 to R4 just to allow the side-by-side two-family dwellings or the duplexes.

That use is not allowed in the R2, so this is another reason why we are asking for it.

The minimum lot size was the second reason.

We were going to hold the rest of the zoning ordinance recommendations except for that reason.

The proposed density is 3.30 units per acre.

This is just kind of a little close up view of the proposed residences along Three Notch Road with two parking pads in front of the residences for the residents to use.

And Habitat has greatly provided this sketch up of the perspective of what this house could, the two duplexes could look like.

And

Cameron didn't mention this but Habitat has actually been approached by a potential collaborator with the Beaver Creek Hill property.

We were also hoping to get a little bit more information or I guess like an opinion on the possibility to rezone this to R6 to allow a smaller minimum lot size so that we could put the residue in the back and allow that land to be purchased by Beaver Creek

with the option of using the land in the front on the adjacent parcel outside of the stream buffer unit as kind of a land swap.

This allows us to protect the stream buffer entirely and not cross it and hopefully come up with some better products for affordability in the area.

Ms.

George, could you go back to the last bit because that was very helpful because I was sort of struggling.

So stop there.

That's the sole structure.

On my right side.

And so the property line, if we were to divide it, goes in the middle of the wall?

Yes, it does.

So this is how urban I am.

When someone says a duplex, I think this way.

I don't think this way.

I think that way.

And if you said a triplex, I would have thought that way.

Yeah, that's very helpful.

I understand.

Now, if you could go back to the go.

forward one, the one that had the water meter.

It was a big image there.

This is actually at the headwaters of the stream buffer itself.

If on Cameron's slides, it actually did show it ending, I think about two lots over.

But we're not, tonight we're not making a decision about the back part where they want to have this- No, this was just kind of to throw out the idea that the possible collaboration in the future.

Just wanted to clarify because I got confused.

Hi, I'm Dan Rosenzweig.

I'm the President and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

Thank you all for generating a quorum on Thanksgiving week, appreciate that.

Just to clarify for that, ideally what would happen tonight is that you recommend approval of R4 and potentially a side note to supervisors that if something could be worked out

with the adjacent neighbors that you don't have a problem with it going to R6 provided the density doesn't change.

The only thing that would change at R6, we would still, we would proffer the density staying at two, but it would allow us to create a bigger area in the back that we could potentially swap for the adjacent property right next to it, which we tried to get so we could do something maybe a little, have a little bit more space to do something a little bit more creative.

So when I say the one next to it, the one plan right as I'm looking at it on 240, it's owned by the owners, the investors of the big parcel behind it.

They purchased it solely to have an option to get back there.

They don't ever want to build that road.

We tried to acquire it from them.

They can't

we can't get it until they find an alternative there.

So what we were thinking, R4 would be fine.

R6 ultimately would be better because we'd have a little bit bigger poker chip to play to try to exchange for the piece next to it to create affordable housing.

Let me ask a follow-up question.

Right, you can't.

It would be buildable by the owners of the parcel behind it should they get access from a different location.

They've been trying to get access to that location behind them through Firehouse Lane.

And they have struggled to get that.

They've been working with the fire department for a while to try to get that.

But assuming that they could get that access into the property, then they could append the back part of this property onto their

and enable us to swap that for the adjacent property.

It's a bit of a, it's again, it's much more complicated than a zoning question.

It's another type of transaction, but again, we would be perfectly happy with R4 as a recommendation.

I just want to remind the Commission that this was advertised only for a rezoning from R2 to R4.

I understand that.

Well, I'll have you up there.

I'll ask you a question about the range of the 25 to 80.

It just seems kind of large.

I appreciate the question.

Our average income has been 34% of the area median income.

You're one of the only providers that reach that deeply.

We went 25 to 80.

Our normal range is actually 25 to 60.

With special exception, a board can approve above 60, but that's typically when we, so we're not just a builder, but we're a housing counselor as well.

So we bring families in and they could come in at a low income.

So I guess that's helpful to know in terms of the kind of the life of the mortgage or the homeowner.

So you're going in target is still that 35,

25 to 60.

That's correct.

And the reason why, again, the reason why we're asking for 25 to 80 is that if a family comes in below 60 and they do great in our program, we would run afoul of zoning if we sold them a house and they were at 61% of area median income.

So it's just to give a little bit of buffer.

Thank you.

You have to create a condo association if you're going to do that.

It's much better to own something fee simple.

And so each family owns the property from their house to the road.

Fair.

So given that, how do they negotiate the common wall?

So if you have the property line go along the wall, first of all, let me ask the question.

Let me back that up.

Is there a shared wall between these two structures or have you put a gap in them so that they each have their own walls?

There is, it's a fire rated wall with an air gap in between.

So an air gap in between.

So there is going to be some, they're going to have to navigate how do we deal with some of this stuff anyhow.

We do escrow something called Xup.

It's an external maintenance knowing that we do a lot of attached product.

During in-families mortgage payments they escrow money into a reserve account and so and then we have a contract with them

We have to put a property of that size if they have to replace the roof, you're talking about 40, $50,000.

Right.

They will have escrowed that.

And they'll collectively escrow for it.

Right.

So the whole site.

And so I'm imagining that

Exactly right.

That's why we created the EXUP program, and we run and manage this.

You do.

Habitat does.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll open it up for any public comments.

Is there anyone in the public that would like to speak to this matter?

Please step up to the podium.

Take your name, area of residence, and you'll have three minutes.

You answered the question about setbacks.

Do you know, it may be too soon to know if they're thinking of fencing in the whole side or is that too soon to know?

Along this side of the street, most people have a fairly narrow driveway.

So I thought 18 by 18 and two of those seemed pretty wide to me.

I just wanted to make that comment.

So would the access to it also be an 18 foot, you know, bump up from the road to the pad?

I don't know.

Is it right on the street is my question.

It must be.

And would landscaping be included is another thing because right now the whole property has been raised except for the trees that you see there.

I guess another question was, was there any other plan for any further units on the property?

But now I see that there aren't plans for further units, but it might be some kind of an access to the big agriculture behind me.

and I would not really be for that because it's a very peaceful neighborhood.

And when they put multi units up there, I'd like to be away from whatever access road there is.

And right now they have one that's adjacent on the right hand side.

Yeah, I guess that's it for my questions or comments.

Thank you.

Any other comments from the public?

My name is David Farrell.

My wife and I own the properties at 5474 and 5484, 5492, and we recently purchased 5498.

And I want to say I'm for the applicant here.

I'd like to go on the record though as saying when we purchased 5498, the house was in fairly deplorable condition and we recently took it down, similar to what the applicant's done on their property.

We met with a senior planner and discussed the possibility of putting a duplex on the property and we're sort of told in no uncertain terms that that wouldn't be possible.

Since we own the property next door, we asked about adding four-tenths of an acre to the six-tenths that's on our 5498 and make it a buy-write R2, and we were sort of told that that wouldn't be possible either.

So I'm just, as a member of the public, sort of concerned if another applicant is getting consideration that I didn't get.

Secondly, I'm sort of interested to hear that they're interested in the lot next door.

I think that's great.

My wife and I, the properties down the street are some of the most affordable housing in Crozet.

We're committed to helping Crozet have affordable housing.

But I'm pretty certain the applicant will make that now an R4 property.

Mr. Bivins, I think your point is well taken.

Taxes are going to go up.

I served for five years on the Board of Equalizations.

I'll disagree slightly with Mr. Barnes.

I see a precedent being set here, and I think these homes, these properties will now be looked at by potential buyers as upzoning possibilities, tear down the old structures.

It's a very modest neighborhood.

I think property is now being bought along here.

I think the possibility of rezoning, the same sort of rezoning request will come up.

I am in favor of this being up zoned.

I think it makes sense between the old ConAgra and downtown Crozet.

I mean, I think it's going to happen, but I'm surprised.

I mean, I'm for it.

I'm sorry it's going to happen, but I think prices are going to go up and taxes are going to go up also, and this is the type of

Anyone else in the public speak to this matter?

No one online?

If I remember, one of the first comments was, I guess, the setbacks on the side.

We've used the 10-foot setbacks because this is considered an infill lot.

There could be fences along there, but it would not be habitat that puts them up.

It would actually be the owners of the lot themselves.

I do understand her reluctance about the landscaping.

We are proposing two trees, one on each side of the property to kind of meet the ARB requirements for the entrance corridors.

The trees in the back that are shaded, the light green, are actually existing trees that have been physically surveyed, located, and that's the approximate size of the drip line.

Those were the largest trees

in the grouping that were of any I guess consequence anything greater than six inches in diameter or breast height.

So I think I've answered everything.

As for the up zoning on the other properties, there's a lot of stuff that I don't know to talk about with that.

The parking pads, actually 18 by 18, the normal parking space in a parking lot is nine feet wide by 18 feet deep.

So for two cars, an 18 by 18 parking pad would allow for two cars.

It's the same width as two parking spaces in your regular parking lot.

Thank you.

All right.

We are closing public hearing.

And then we'll bring it back for discussion.

Commission.

Karen, do you want to start on your end?

You know, how do I say this?

How can I not be for this project?

But how can I not also say this is going to do the thing that when we were talking about projects on the other side of the railroad tracks,

that we sort of winced and said yes, okay.

So this whole area here, I mean, this is also an interesting thing.

There's a lot of release signs around the Del Monte plant now.

So if you hadn't noticed it, I don't know where they came from.

But there's a lot of release signs on that property and I don't

Oh, for lease.

I thought you said for lease.

No, for lease.

Police signs around the Del Monte property.

I don't know what that means.

I'm not going to speculate what that means.

All I see is a lot of signs that say for lease over there.

When we talk about, I shouldn't say this, when people share with us what are we doing to part of the heart of old Crozet,

This is one of those elements, this is one of those parts of El Crozet that goes all the way up to Railroad Avenue, as many of you know, and then goes up, goes sort of more so to the

to the north of the community as opposed to some of the changes that are going to the south of the community of Crozet.

I think it's good that we're redoing these properties.

I am fearful that we are also going to be moving people out of the property.

I think the comment about these being places that would be

I believe that will happen in some x amount of years.

I won't speculate on that.

But I guess that's where we live now.

We live in a place that we don't have a lot of houses for people with modest incomes.

And those places that we do have houses with modest income, they're now on roads that are changing.

They're changing dramatically because that's an entrance road into Crozet.

And I'm sure there will be pressure on that road to make it more in keeping with the idea of the ARB.

but I would like to just go on and take the moment to say I think however that gets developed from here on out that we are cognizant and we are appreciative of the working women and men of that neighborhood who made that what it is.

And I think we are stepping away from that and that's a reality of what we're doing in our community.

So I support it.

because how could I not support it?

Because I think it is the right thing to do for that piece of property.

I do appreciate Commissioner Bivins on this, that we have, as a whole county and the city certainly as well, made it much, much harder for people who work for wages to afford to live here.

And that's a big problem that

is well beyond the scope of a proposal for two homes.

But, you know, I think that's real.

I think if Commissioner Murray were here tonight, he could talk about, of course, a generation or a generation and a half ago was like the redneck area, you know, where like blue collar workers at ConAgra lived.

And it was, you know, and now it's completely transformed in a lot of ways.

I think with this one it makes a lot of sense not just because of Habitat's commitment to low-income housing for these two units but also just because if you look at the sort of math on this with neighborhood density residential very much fits within sort of you know the rezoning potential three to six homes per acre yeah like two homes on 0.6 acres very easily fits within that range so I don't have any problem with that

If anything honestly this is another one that I think about our zoning modernization work coming up where we have a lot of R2 and R2 is pretty restrictive.

I would love to see R2 be able to include granny cottages or duplexes or even triplexes in the future and if we just change that definition of R2 that might be a simpler way

to get more homes for people in our community.

That's just something I'm putting on the table for future conversation.

Do you have anything to add?

No.

Well, I am also supportive of this.

I think it's that we have very few opportunities for low income that's actually low income that you can get near 30 to 40 percent, which we just don't see it.

And I think this would be a great location.

Obviously, there is a lot of growth that's happening in Crozet, you know, give access to that community.

So, yeah, I'm in support of this.

I would like to, I would just like to ask sort of an intertial, just an intertial thing.

I would like us to stop referring to accessory units as granny, as granny units.

They are not granny units.

Grannies are living in the colonies.

They're living in Florida.

I think it's fair for us to say they're living at the beach.

I think that diminishes what we need because we need other things and I think terming it sort of like it's sort of

makes it taste better for people.

But that's not what's going on here, folks.

Is your granny a niece?

No.

My grannies are thankful that they don't have to deal with me on an annual basis.

So my grannies have shuffled off this mortal quarrel.

But I will say, but my mom was one to go to niece and not even to let me know she was there.

Allow me to change my terminology to tiny homes, homes under 600 square feet.

I'm still willing to take a motion.

Chair, I'd like to move.

Why I was running my mouth right.

Three is the three, not.

Oh, you're right, fine.

Any further discussion?

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Mr. Barnes.

Or actually, first, do we have any committee reports?

I still have a committee report, actually.

The CTAC, the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, met last week.

We saw a presentation on, sort of by request, we asked for travel demand models for bike and pedestrian travel.

About half the presentation was sort of limitations of the data, because there's no comprehensive statewide data, the national surveys are very limited, the counting programs are sparse and inconsistent, and really all the travel demand models are built around car traffic.

and it's very hard for those models to capture small improvements like crosswalks and trail connections and protected lanes that kind of thing.

That said, VDOT does use some localized non-motorized vehicle counts and those have informed various projects in Alexandria and a new multimodal bridge in Richmond and so on.

So kind of an interesting presentation.

Most of the meeting actually was whether SeaTac should continue and we talked quite a bit about kind of

The original purpose of a Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, which is to inform and be sort of an engagement conduit for the long-range transportation planning process.

And then between LRTPs, it's kind of like, what do we do?

But we just have kept meeting every other month.

Essentially, CTAC did ask for, there are a couple of options presented.

Okay, thank you.

I know we had so many members.

We still do.

Mr. Barnes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So the one meeting we've had since we last met was on November 19th.

It's a fairly light agenda for the board.

They had a couple work sessions dealing with sort of fiscal planning over the next five year.

Time Horizon, as well as discussion of fiscal policy in the county.

They did, however, review a special exception or basically a waiver to the setbacks for an access to a parcel that's going to be used to accept some clean fill.

The parcel is out on 250.

East, right after you go past the DDI and underneath the, you know, 64 there, just past that.

It's the parcel that currently has sort of like a, it's a brick, little slung brick building there that is, has a European car repair business in it.

I think the address is 2238 Richmond Road.

Does that mean that business is going to go away?

No, the business, it doesn't really affect the business.

I think they're going to bring the trucks, they're bringing the fill right there where the business is, but it's back.

It's going to the parcel behind them.

I think if you can picture, there's a large church.

There is.

Sort of the other side of the swale.

There is.

From where this fills can be placed.

That was the one item of land use type of related issues.

So I thought I'd bring that to your attention, but that was the extent of the meeting on the 19th.

I do want to take this opportunity, if you don't mind, to talk a little bit about our next meeting.

I apologize, I've got things moving on and off the agenda, things I'm not necessarily in control of.

We were trying to bring the riparian buffer to you all next week.

and as well as Belvedere.

Belvedere has moved to the first meeting in January and the riparian buffer ordinance is going to move to the second meeting in January.

Unfortunately, I had just asked you like a couple days ago, hey, can we have a meeting on the fourth, you know, for work session?

Because I thought it was going to be more work than we can handle.

Now it doesn't look like that.

I'm still going to keep it at four o'clock.

It's what it's in the agenda here.

And it's what we're talking about.

So we're going to a work session.

uh next week um on um on the second this is on the ninth there's nothing there's there's no meeting next our next our next meeting i should have say excuse me i apologize it would be december 9th yes and we will have a work session uh on our item that was supposed to be tonight but we moved that one because of and we do appreciate that consideration of people wanting to

here this conversation about the build-out analysis.

So we're going to move that to next week.

Excuse me.

It's the ninth, two weeks from now.

And at the December 9th, we'll have that at 4 p.m.

And we'll only have one item that evening.

And it's a presentation about Stillhouse Mountain.

The current property owner would like to put a conservation easement.

It's right at the edge.

It's in the development area, right at the edge of the development area.

So we need to do a review of the

A proposal against the conference plan, but it's nothing you'll even have to take action on.

Yes, ma'am.

You have one on December 16th.

Right.

And we'll be dealing with hopefully the SEAG rezoning.

Right.

As well as

and Willa Mills that you all had seen once before the fill in the floodplain in Willa Mills that's coming back.

I will send out an updated calendar to you guys first thing tomorrow for December and what I have for January.

Quick question again.

I doubt there's a big update on this, but anyway, at least two members of the Planning Commission cycling off.

I have spoken with the clerk of the board, and she is working on that.

Typically, the applications are open, and it's sort of, as you all well know, it's often a prerogative, the board member.

They should be up already.

I believe that Claudette has them up, but I can confirm that with her.

Any other, I don't know if we're a new business or old business by now, but business, we have any business.

and no items for follow-up.

Thank you.